Thursday, April 12, 2012

There is no safe store of value

America has produced its share of radicals, both left and right. Although the definitions of “radical” have shifted over time (our Founding Fathers would be considered extremists today), those that are on the wrong side of prevailing definitions are usually precluded from public roles. Exceptions can be found, usually accompanied by a perceived “road to Damascus” conversion. Senator Robert Byrd of WV, an alleged former member of the Klan, is one example. Another astonishing example is provided below. This man stated the following:
The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.
Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth.
… the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes. A substantial part of the confiscation is effected by taxation. But the welfare statists were quick to recognize that if they wished to retain political power, the amount of taxation had to be limited and they had to resort to programs of massive deficit spending, i.e., they had to borrow money, by issuing government bonds, to finance welfare expenditures on a large scale.
In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold.
Based on the above, one would assume this man would have no desire to serve a government whose primary role, as perceived by him, was plunder of the wealth of its citizens. Furthermore, one might also assume that such a man would be judged unfit to serve, because his philosophical framework would be a threat to the myth of government and the bulk of its programs. Yet such a man did go on to serve and serve admirably in the eyes of many. Indeed, in terms of the thinking reflected in the statements above, he became the Chief Officer of Plunder. In more polite terms, the office is known as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. His name, of course, is Alan Greenspan otherwise dubbed “The Maestro” by admirers in the media. Lately, his admirers have lessened as his policies are seen to have been at the root of our current economic problems. Perhaps he should have stuck to his original principles rather than become an instrument of the State and a part of the problem.